


it's not hell

by orphan_account



Series: Nick's Recovery [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amnesia, Burns, Gen, Hospital, post-apocalypse that never was, post-lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-26
Updated: 2014-06-26
Packaged: 2018-02-06 07:16:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1849216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wakes up in a white room. He doesn't know his name.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not hell

The place he is in is full of symbols and piercing voices of angels while he struggles through. The noise is deafening, the signs are blinding. and he can barely find the strength in him to make it through, dragging what should be his body through the cacophony. He's not sure when it started or if it has always been this loud, something that he used to be able to turn off but now is like a broken record with no volume control or sense of direction, up or down, words or numbers. It's like a neverending alarm telling him to get out, to wake up, symbols flashing red and angels screaming at him as he continues to kill them, killing his brethren.

I didn't want to, I had no other choice. Some part of his mind supplies the answer and it doesn't seem to fit, because he doesn't remember any siblings. He doesn't remember anything except for a blank white space, frigid but comfortable, like a doctor's waiting room but fitting like a glove.

He can't see the symbols now, or was it a language? It's dark. His heart is still racing, panic fading, and he hears a beeping noise.

It takes him a while to make the connection between physical movement, reality, and his mind but somehow he does it and opens his eyes.

White walls.

Hospital. He's in a hospital. 

He doesn't know if he's been in one before. Logically he knows that he's smelled hospitals before, but besides knowledge of the scent he doesn't remember the image of one or why he had ever been in one.

God, what was his name?

He says was like it no longer has any relevance to the present, Maybe it doesn't. Maybe that person he was is dead.

Maybe he's already dead. Maybe he's in heaven. If heaven is a hospital.

No, he hurts too much for it to be heaven or whatever would be the paradise after death. He aches.

Even moving his face hurts. Especially his face hurts. There's something wrong with it, some bumps that feel like the bee stings he got as a child, but deeper and bloodier. It feels like those third degree burns he acquired when he was a teenager in foods class and hadn't noticed his smoking clothes until it had been too late.

God it feels so deep. Like they boiled through his skin from the inside. He's still lying down as he reaches with his arm, slowly, painfully, up to his face to feel around them. It stings when he touches them. But they're definitely large, definitely deep. 

They definitely hurt.

A brief flash of someone saying words that are muffled but bright, a cold presence that consumes him telling him how he is only temporary. He pulls his hand away.

Then the door opens, and he flinches. He's sure he didn't use to flinch.

"Ah, our John Doe is finally awake!" A doctor, by the looks of him, cheery and middle-aged. Laugh lines. He wonders briefly if he has any of those himself, but he feels like he never laughed much in his life. Or maybe he can't see them because of the burns (are they even that?) on his face right now. Either way, he feels an envy that he can't control.

The Doctor (Dr. Anderson, his name tag says) sits on his bedside and peers in towards Nick. He's not uncomfortable with the doctor doing this, but it still feels like an invasion of his privacy for whatever reason. It's unsettling. 

He checks his vitals and then starts to ask him questions. He had been dreading the questions. He doesn't have any answers. And that bothers him.

"What's your name?"

It feels humiliating to admit it. "I... I don't know."

The doctor stops for a moment and then makes a soft 'oh' sound to himself. He continues, eyebrows slightly pinched. "Do you know anything about yourself?"

He thinks for a second. Tries to feel around in his mind for anything that could have been from his past. Finds nothing. 

Defeat again.

"Not that I can recall. Some vague impressions like cold and some voices, but other than that..." He trails off. It seems safer to not mention or even think about angels, like a natural predilection to avoid those topics.

Dr. Anderson nods, forming a file in his mind about him. He can sense it. "I see." He shifts a little. Seems concerned. Or at least putting on that facade of being concerned. Takes a breath. "You have all the symptoms of amnesia."

Oh.

"You also have third degree burns all over your body as I'm sure you probably felt when you woke up. You've been in a coma for the past two weeks."

Oh.

The doctor looks at him with sympathetic eyes over his glasses. "I don't know what you went through, but from where I'm sitting it looks a lot like hell."

He shudders at that word for reasons he doesn't know.

He surprises himself when he speaks.

"Maybe I did, Doc. Maybe I did."


End file.
